One coat "stucco" on foam
is EIFS

Ask
the
pros-
September,
2002

By Reggie Bullard

One coat "stucco" on foam is
EIFS When I bought my
Morrison home,
I was under the impression that it would be clad with "stucco".
That's
what their sales documents advertised, anyway. What I got was something
they called one-coat stucco. It is a materialmanufactured by Omega
called
the diamond one-coat system. It uses that styrofoam stuff.
The builder claims it uses a thin coat of cement. They say there
are grooves in the sytrofoam, but when I looked at the Omega web site,
the description doesn't show that. There is what I think is a
weep
screed at the bottom of the wall for removal of moisture. The
installation
of the material looks faulty, since there are many gaps between the
"one-coat"
and dissimilar materials, and there are openings in wndow jointsand such.

My question is, is
this type
of system reliable? I'm worried that I might have the kind of
trouble
encountered by people who have EIFS on their homes.The builder swears
up
and down that the Omega Diamond system is NOT EIFS.

Any information you
can provide
will be greatly appreciated.Yes, that is EIFS. I hate to make you feel
bad,
but styrofoamis styrofoam, regardless of how thick the
mortar
is.Synthetic stucco has a finish material that
is
made of paint and plastic sand.This synthetic finish traps moisture
against
the wall.It is fraud to advertise these houses as
stucco.They are finally cracking down on some
ofthese
people here in Virginia, but they will probably never face criminal
charges,
like other lying crookssuch as Enron and Worldcom for example.Thank you. You're
not kidding it
was
fraud. Luckily, I saved the salesmaterials that advertised the house as
stucco,the
denial by the Morrison VP that the system is EIFS, I videotaped the
fellow
who came to repair the stuff and got him on tape admitting that it
wasn't
installed correctly and so on. I'm going to do my best to use
this
against them. Guess my next step is to hire an inspector to see
if
there is water damage.I'm in California. I
didn't get a
response
from a Morrison VP until I sent him an e-mail mentioning the huge Toll
Brothers suit where the builder got nicked by saying it was selling
stucco
when it wasn't. Right away he wrote me back saying that it wasn't
EIFS. Unfortunately I have an arbitration agreement on the
sales contract saying any item that relates to the 10 year warranty
must
be arbitrated. Luckily, stucco is specifically exempted from the
warranty! So they may have outslicked themselves on that
score.
I'll see what an attorney says. Failing that, I'll tell everyone
in my neighborhood. In this state, I'm pretty sure you can
certify
a class for arbitration purposes. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts
nobody
in my development knows what they have. I know the same defects
in
installation are on other houses, since I've looked around the
neighborhood
and I can see the same sorts of things.